


and I awaken (but where have all the stars gone?)

by killingthemoon



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Angst, Dreams, Dreams and Nightmares, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, M/M, Night Terrors, Nightmares, ish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-05
Updated: 2019-07-05
Packaged: 2020-06-09 20:17:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19483234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/killingthemoon/pseuds/killingthemoon
Summary: He wakes with a shuddering gasp, bolting upright, and for a moment he is back there, in the darkness and the freezing cold.Or, three times Aziraphale comforts Crowley after a nightmare, and one time Crowley returns the favour.





	and I awaken (but where have all the stars gone?)

**Author's Note:**

> The poems and songs used in the titles are as follows:
> 
> i. 'Ode to a Nightingale' by John Keats  
> ii. 'You, Therefore' by Reginald Shepard  
> iii. 'Proportion Surviving' by Renee Gladman  
> iv. 'Fourth of July' by Sufjan Stevens

**i. darkling I listen; and, for many a time, I have been half in love with easeful Death.**

Here is how it begins: Crowley is Falling.

He can feel the fire as it scorches, and it _hurts._ He is blind, he can neither see nor hear, can only feel the horrific, ravaging pain as it racks through his body again and again, merciless. His wings feel as though they have been set aflame and are crumbling away into ash, he feels as if his eyes are burning in the blazing brightness, is vaguely aware of bloody tears streaking out of them and being buffeted back by the unforgiving wind. And then, as suddenly as it started, the fall stops. The breath is knocked violently out of him with the sudden impact, and he lays there for a few moments, wheezing pathetically in the pitch dark.

His wings are black, he can see. His mouth feels dry; he is _parched_ he realizes, he needs water desperately, but there is none, so he continues to lie on his back. The sky above is dark and endless. There is not a single star in sight. The burning heat of mere moments ago has dissipated, and now he is cold, he is so, _so cold._ His teeth are clattering together like nails drumming against a table, and he is shivering violently, a leaf in a vicious hurricane. He feels as if some part of him has been cleaved out, leaving behind a hollow cavern of rot and ruin. He is freezing. He knows what this is. This is the absence of Heavenly light. This is God leaving him, and he has no words for it.

He is alone and so very, dreadfully cold. He climbs shakily to his feet, and every part of him screams in protest, every part of him aches and burns and shudders, but he needs to know. He gropes blindly in the darkness and feels the smooth handle of a mirror appearing in his hand. He raises it to his face, trembling, denying, praying.

His eyes are yellow and slitted.

···

He wakes with a shuddering gasp, bolting upright, and for a moment he is back there, in the darkness and the freezing cold, he is doing it all over again. The sheets twisted around him are alight, burning him, and his teeth are chattering once more, his breath coming in great, heaving gulps. His mouth is bone-dry.

He is dimly aware of someone next to him, of movement and soft noises of bemusement, but he doesn’t register them properly in his state. He needs to get away. He is so cold.

A light clicks on, and it is relentlessly bright. He hisses in pain, and it dims.

“Crowley?” comes a confused and sleepy voice. It is this voice that drags him out of that dreadful place, the algid prison in which he has been cast. It is still bitterly cold, but now it feels as if the cold is only inside him and not all around, as though his heart has been excavated from his chest and replaced with a block of ice. He shivers and finds he cannot stop.

“Crowley,” the voice comes again, and sight comes to him slowly. A tangled tartan quilt, a bookshelf crammed with thick tomes. The light is coming from an elegant shaded lamp, golden and soft. It reminds him too much of what he has lost. “My dear, what’s wrong?”

_Aziraphale._

That is who the voice belongs to. He swallows thickly, around the lump that has grown there, a ball of fear and cowardice and deceit. There are soft hands closing around his own. Flashes of well-manicured nails, faint sleep lines etched into pale arms. It comes to him in pieces of fractured glass.

“Aziraphale,” he croaks, he needs confirmation, needs to know there is someone else here. He cannot be back _there._

“I'm here,” comes the instant reply, voice sleep-rumpled but decidedly his. He releases the breath he didn’t realize he was holding in and slumps, defeated, back against the pillows. He is still shaking. “I’m here.”

Crowley grabs ahold of Aziraphale’s hands like they are the only solid things in the universe. He can still feel the wind, the fire, the emptiness. He feels as though the bones in his body are going to snap, brittle and breakable. He is scared he will hear it.

Aziraphale’s eyes are blue, and he doesn’t know how he ever could have compared them to ice chips. They are not cold, they are warm and beautiful, cornflowers under a lovely summer sky. He seems to be reading the expression on Crowley’s face like one of his prized manuscripts. He snaps his fingers, and a glass of water materializes in his empty hand.

“Here,” he says softly. “Drink.”

Crowley takes it gratefully, gulping it down as quickly as he can. It is room temperature, it doesn’t burn or freeze, and he is relieved. He coughs when he is done.

The angel is sitting so that he can face him, legs drawn up close. He takes Crowley’s hands in his own, rubbing small, concentric circles on his palms. He tries to focus on this and not the horror of the nightmare. Slowly, in bits and pieces, he begins to come back to himself.

“I was back there,” he says around his paper tongue because he has been consumed with this intense need to convey it all to Aziraphale. “I was back there in the cold and the dark, I was so alone and _so fucking cold_. I was nothing, I had nothing, I was so alone and angry and scared and it was all a distraction, just a distraction until, I don’t know, I could find a way to make it all stop. I don’t want to go back, Aziraphale, _please_ don’t make me go back, I can’t, not to the dark and the silence and the cold, I don’t ever want to go—”

"Hey,” Aziraphale cuts him off, voice low and soothing as if he is talking to a scared animal. “You don’t ever have to go back. You’re safe. You’re safe here. It’s over now.”

_It’s over now._

“It’s over?” he asks, and he hates how pitifully small his voice sounds in the roaring silence of the room, but Aziraphale doesn’t seem to care.

"Never again. And if anyone tries, they’ll have me to go through.” He gives a clumsy wink, and Crowley laughs. It sounds shuddery and too high, but it is the best he can manage.

"Please don’t go,” he says. There is an intense vulnerability behind his words, one he has only ever trusted Aziraphale with. It still takes some getting used to, the fact that they have given a name to this amalgamation of longing glances and fierce protectiveness and _stay with me._ It has always been there, silent and unacknowledged, and even they don’t know for how long. Maybe since Eden, maybe after, but it’s there. Aziraphale brushes his lips against his, feather-soft and sweet.

"I'm not going anywhere,” he promises. Crowley believes him. _This is love,_ he manages to think through the white-noise consuming him, this unwavering trust, this faithful loyalty.

“Tell me about something?” Because he cannot go back to silence. Not now.

"Of course, my dear.”

He lays back down, Aziraphale holding him, his soft voice lilting as he talks about all manner of things. A new shipment of novels he’d received, a little incident that had happened in Rome all those centuries ago, a dreadfully insistent customer he’d averted the other day. He is lulled back into sleep by his lover’s voice, and this time, he has no nightmares.

* * *

**ii. home is nowhere, therefore you, a kind of dwell and welcome, song after all, and free of any Eden we can name.**

Here is how it begins: he is running to the bookshop again, to the place where he is sure they let him burn.

“Aziraphale!” he shouts into the roaring of the flames, into the snap and the crackle of wood. “Aziraphale, where the Heaven are you, you idiot? I can’t _find you_!” They have always been able to find each other, time and time again, over the centuries. So what does this mean, then, this anguish with no reply?

There is no answer, only the crash of another shelf breaking down. He doesn’t know if these flames are hellish or not, he has no way of knowing at all, and he realizes, with heart-shattering certainty, that he has lost his best friend. _No_ , he thinks. _He’s not leaving me._

The flames are sudden. The firemen outside are scrambling to extinguish them, to contain them. They probably think Crowley is dead. He feels panic rising in his throat, growing greater by the second, a tidal wave. He thinks, what comes next? Will there be a net to catch him as he falls off of the high-wire, or will there be nothing but woollen drowning, silent and final? He thinks of blue eyes and the hint of a smile.

Aziraphale smiles at him as though it is a secret, this fragile quirk of lips or this angelic beam or this teasing smirk or this sad little thing. He smiles as though he is unsure of himself, or as though he cannot be more certain. They wound him, sometimes, and they are a healing grace on others. He cannot bear to think of a life in which he no longer sees those smiles.

This cannot be happening. This cannot be happening. _This cannot be happening_. Aziraphale cannot be gone, it is a ridiculous, nearly unfathomable idea; Aziraphale, who has been there since day one, Aziraphale with his books and his sweets and his surprisingly sharp wit. His _thereness_ has always been a constant factor. He exudes the stuff in comforting waves, an assurance that no matter what, he will not leave. But he has left, now, at the end of it all.

“Aziraphale, please!” He doesn’t know with whom he is pleading. He only knows that he will do whatever it takes to make sure that this is not the end. “For Go- Sa- _somebody’s_ sake, answer me!”

He watches in mute horror as more and more books are ruined, as he is completely and totally surrounded by the swelteringly hot flames. Panic and fury and a raw and painful loss surge up in his chest, visceral, wounded. He wants to scream at the sky with the force of the emotions clustering within him, to destroy any angel or demon or whatever else in between who may even think of stopping him. _What sick semblance of justice is this?_ he wants to demand.

There is still so much they haven’t done. Armageddon is still looming. Aziraphale had promised him a picnic. They still needed to have that picnic. He doesn’t know what to do, what to say—a thousand stupid jibes he has yet to throw, a thousand heartfelt words he has yet to say, a thousand confessions, a thousand, a thousand.

This cannot be happening. But it is.

Aziraphale is gone, and he is all alone.

···

He wakes with a shuddering gasp, bolting upright. It is still dark outside, the curtains he’d insisted Aziraphale buy fluttering slightly in a faint breeze. The window must be open, letting in the sweet night air. He still has one foot in a nightmare, one eye closed; this is all a hallucination, another dream. The shop is gone. It burned down to ash. _Aziraphale_ is gone. He feels awful, like he’s about to be sick all over the sheets. Nausea rises in him like a wave.

But if the shop is gone, then where is he?

He remembers, distantly, as though peering through a porthole into a life that could have been—a new load of books, and an angel insisting that he needed to get through them all but _you can go along to bed, Crowley dear, this will take a good long while, I’m afraid_.

He doesn’t dare let himself hope. Hope is a fool’s game to play, and he is unwilling to let it be stamped down like a flower underfoot. He gets out of bed, letting the tartan quilt fall onto the mattress with a muffled thump. One of Aziraphale’s sweaters is thrown over the back of a cushy chintz armchair. It’s argyle-patterned, beige, the diamonds grey and pale blue. He pulls it on. It is too big for him, and rather hideous, but it smells comforting. It smells like home, and home has always been Aziraphale. Like caramels and old book pages, a lingering scent of cologne, a faint hint of Earl Grey tea. He breathes it in.

He runs his hands along the walls as he goes down the stairs. The lights are on below, and he can hear someone moving about, but still, he doesn’t hope. He presses his hand firmly flat against the bannister, feeling its cool solidness beneath his palm. It is not burned. It is still here. He swallows, and he carries on.

He steps into the store and his heart slows down its frantic symphony.

Aziraphale is in one of his squashy armchairs, an emerald-green monstrosity, a cup of cocoa at his elbow and a book held in his hands. He is evidently deeply absorbed in it, and this is why he doesn’t notice Crowley until he is right next to him.

“Oh, good Heavens!” he starts, almost knocking over the cold mug of hot chocolate. “Crowley, I daresay, you scared me half to death!” He pauses, frowning as he takes in the fear on Crowley’s face and the sweater he has wrapped himself up in. Voice softening, he says, “Crowley, my dear, whatever is the matter?”

He doesn’t trust himself to speak. Instead, he reaches out a hand and lays it hesitantly on Aziraphale’s cheek, tracing along the bone and meandering down to his jaw. He feels all the little things beneath his fingertips, testimony to his continued survival; smooth skin and wisps of hair curling around ears. All solid. All present.

Aziraphale does not hesitate. He shuffles over slightly, patting the spot next to him on the seat, book lying forgotten on the table. Crowley sits down, legs thrown over Aziraphale’s. He leans in, letting himself be pulled into this lover’s embrace. He presses his face into the crook between Aziraphale’s shoulder and his neck, greedily breathing in the scent of him. He surrounds himself with it, tells himself _, he’s here, he’s here._

 _Are you sure?_ asks some other part of him, a part that seems to have nothing better to do than stand around and heighten his agitation. _Are you sure he’s here? He could just as easily be smoke and wood._

“Are you really here?” he asks Aziraphale, just to be sure. He thinks, if he could hear his voice confirming what he needs to be true, then things would be better.

“I’m here,” he murmurs into his hair, hands rubbing steady circles between his shoulder blades, right where his wings would be if they had been out. “I’m right here, my dear.”

“I just,” he says, feeling some distant wall crumbling down to dust and rubble, “you were gone. And I didn’t know who’d done it, or if you could come back. I screamed your name, and for the first time in so long, there was no answer.”

The circles stop for just a second. “I know. I know. I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to apologize.”

“But I do, don't I? Oh, Crowley,” he sighs. “I should have known better.”

“You were gone.” The words still sound wrong, clumsy and misplaced in his mouth.

“I’m here now.”

“I thought you were—” _say it._ “Dead.” he manages to choke, spitting the words out like a mouthful of punched-in teeth. They clatter across the floor. He feels the slight movement as Aziraphale swallows.

“I am so sorry, my love.”

He says nothing in reply, simply squeezes his eyes shut against the world, cold and unforgiving as it is. He inhales, letting the smell soothe him, feels gentle hands on his back and lips pressed into his hair. He lets himself be comforted, here, in this moment. Aziraphale is not dead. He is not gone. He is right here, legs shifting underneath Crowley’s, chest taking in breath after breath and then letting it out.

“My dear,” Aziraphale says softly, as though he is the single most beautiful thing in all of creation, and Crowley listens. “My star in the sky, dearest mine. I will not leave you.”

Crowley unintentionally makes a sound like he has been wounded, somewhere in the back of his throat. And isn’t that just the thing, how he still manages to be hurt by these little confessions they draw themselves into, how some buried part of him still tries to insist that it is not true, that Aziraphale is gone. _How could he ever love you?_ the voice says gleefully. The angel seems to sense this discordant disbelief, because he holds on tighter.

“I will forever be here, I promise you this, my Versailles, my cardinal bird, my willow tree.”

“I love you, too,” he whispers against his skin.

Aziraphale presses a kiss to the top of his head. Feathery white wings sprout out of his back and wrap around the two of them like a shield, like a promise.

 _You are safe here, you are safe here,_ he says, but not with words. _I am safe and so are you, we are not yet ruined._

* * *

**iii. the rule of survival is that no two people can lie in the same bed and sleep at the same time.**

Here is how it begins: Aziraphale is kissing him.

It feels wonderful, it always does. It feels as though they are doing it for the first time each time, it always elicits the same rapid-fire crackle of fireworks, the same buoyant feeling, be it long or short. He lets himself be pulled into it. He feels every little thing, the shift of Aziraphale’s fingers tangled in his hair, the flicker of tongue, the _need_ of it.

He recalls words spoken over several glasses of wine, half-whispered into flushed skin and probably long forgotten: _Oh, but you’re always tempting me, Crowley._

And then it all sours.

Aziraphale pulls away, a triumphant look on his face, and he knows something has changed, some alarm clock has been set ticking. He wants to ask, _what is it?_ but he doesn’t. There is a faint glimmer of something in his blue eyes, something that seems almost wicked.

“Aziraphale?” he asks. He is still half in the elated stupor that springs him every time Aziraphale touches him, and maybe this is why no warning bells ring. He is tracing a finger lightly down his arm, coming to rest around his wrist.

“You know,” Aziraphale says, leaning back slightly against a bookshelf; they are in the shop, and it is bright outside. A single sunbeam has managed to battle through the dust and the stacks of books to lie weakly across his nose, a war-weary soldier of AZ Fell and Co. “I didn’t think you’d fall for it at first.”

The high has begun to wear off somewhat. Giddy smile faltering, he asks, “What?”

“You are remarkably intelligent, Crowley, but somehow you’ve turned a blindside here.”

“Aziraphale?” he asks again, tentative, cautious. He sees the spark now, written plainly in his eyes, in the twist of his mouth, in the lines of his face. “What are you talking about?”

The grip on Crowley’s wrist has suddenly become vice-like. “Did you really think,” he hisses, “that someone like _me_ could ever love something like _you_?”

“I don’t understand—”

“Of course you don’t!” he says gleefully. “You’re a _demon_ and I'm an _angel_. Did you really think that I could feel anything but utter disgust towards you? You don’t understand so I’ll explain: I’ve always _loathed_ you, Crowley, and only ever have."

Aziraphale is what he has never been: cold and cruel, and he suddenly remembers with painful clarity that the angel is a Principality of Eden. But no—Aziraphale would never hurt him. He would never—right?

 _You knew this would happen,_ a voice reasons in his head. _You always knew that he would hate you, in the end_. _It’s what you deserve._

“Stop it,” he manages to say, through the blaring sirens in his head. _Get out, get out, get out,_ they wail. The grip is painful, too painful—Aziraphale’s nails are digging into his skin, he realizes, and inky black ichor is trickling down his wrist in slender streams. “Stop it, Aziraphale, you’re scaring me.” And it’s true. He cannot recall a single moment in their entire six-thousand-something year long history in which Aziraphale was anything but kind towards him.

He laughs, low and precise. His eyes are glowing a pure, heavenly white, a halo flickering to life above his head. He is terrifying. “Oh, Crowley. My dear,” he mocks. “ _You should be scared._ ”

And then he is screaming. Every part of him hurts, hurts worse than when he fell, worse than what he thinks holy water must feel like, and Aziraphale is _laughing_ —

···

He wakes with a shuddering gasp, bolting upright. Jolts of phantom pain dance over his skin, taunting.

 _Just a dream, just a dream,_ he tells himself, pulling the air greedily into his stoppered lungs.

 _Wouldn't be surprised if it were true, though_ , the darker part of him muses. He tells that part to kindly fuck off, but it's true—as much as it pains him to admit, despite all the love and the happiness and the peace he feels here, with Aziraphale, there is still a little part of him that clamours to prove it is a ruse, that speaks in the same voice as the Aziraphale from the dream.

He feels as though he is about to crawl out of his skin, set on edge as he is. He hates how pathetic it is, how he can be so rattled by a simple nightmare. What must Aziraphale think of him? He feels the familiar demonic energy pulling at him, coursing through his veins and tingling in his fingertips like static. It is telling him to make some trouble, and right now, he doesn’t think much of contradicting it. It’s been a while since the last time he has had a hand in a good and proper bank robbery. The rich have too much money on their hands, anyway, and hinting to a small group of thieves already drifting towards violent tendencies wouldn’t be difficult in the slightest. But something stops him.

There is a hand on his chest, connected to an arm, connected to an angel. Aziraphale is pressed to him as though he is the snake and not Crowley; their legs are tangled together below the covers, and his head is lying on his shoulder. There is hardly any room between them, and he can feel the warmth he radiates, can feel the slight twitch of his fingers every once in a while, the faintest movement of his lips.

He looks down onto his face.

Aziraphale looks younger in sleep, if such a thing is even possible for them. All the trials and tribulations of the bustling mortal world have been wiped off, leaving behind a blank slate, an empty canvas. His eyes are shut, his white-blond curls mussed in an enticing way that makes Crowley want to run his fingers through them—Hell, who’s going to stop him? So he does.

The angel shifts slightly in his sleep, a soft sound slipping past his teeth, and Crowley feels an entirely un-demonic surge of love flare up in his chest. The jitters have begun to slow somewhat, letting the reality sink into his bones: right now, he is safe. He is reluctant to admit it.

He takes the hand Aziraphale has splayed over his chest, right above where the mortal heart thunders in his immortal chest. He runs his thumb over the knuckles before raising it to his lips and kissing them, just the barest brush of his lips.

“I love you,” he whispers against them. There is no answer, but he doesn’t need one.

Tomorrow, he will wake up and Crowley will be more than content to watch the golden morning sunlight paint his lover’s face, to watch and watch, overflowing with affection until he wakes up. This will most likely not be the case, as Aziraphale has still not quite gotten used to sleep and wakes up entirely too early for the demon’s liking. Here, he feels it is his stoic duty to cling to him, still half-asleep, tempting him into staying just a little while longer; _but the bed is so much warmer with you here in my arms, angel_ , in that way Aziraphale cannot resist. They will meander down into the kitchen, eventually, and they will have tea, eventually, and they will get on with their day, eventually. They will dine at home or at the Ritz or at a little out-of-the-way place that Crowley has found and charmed him with. They will get back into this very bed, drunk on love and maybe liquor, and then they will have the luxury of being able to do it all over again the next day, and then the next and the next, a marching army of bliss stretching onwards into the foreseeable future.

But for now, he is more than happy to watch Aziraphale’s face, faintly illuminated by the streetlamp outside as he sleeps. He feels the terror of the nightmare being purged from his body and mind. He wraps his arms around his angel, and he watches and he watches and is peaceful in this silent vigilance until the sun comes up and Aziraphale sleepily kisses him good-morning.

And it does not hurt.

* * *

**iv. did you get enough love, my little dove? why do you cry? and I’m sorry I left, but it was for the best, though it never felt right.**

He awakes to something amiss.

He does not know what, exactly, it is that has dragged him out of unconscious, only that something has. He squints in the half-light, tired. The air of the room is still, hushed as though cowering before a deathbed. It shivers around him, and Crowley suddenly realizes that it is right to do so; it is _cold._

He turns to Aziraphale, and he stops.

The sudden cold in the room is not coincidental, or a product of bad heating. It is Aziraphale. Cold is radiating off of him in slow and steady waves, icy, consuming. He is lying oddly, he realizes, rigid and unmoving. His teeth are grinding against one another, a sound he hadn’t previously noticed.

He hesitates for just a moment, hand hovering over Aziraphale’s shoulder, before he shakes him slightly.

“Aziraphale,” Crowley says softly. “Wake up.”

He wakes with a shuddering gasp, bolting upright. His hands grasp unsteadily at some distant thing, closing in around nothing but air, and he makes a strangled sort of noise of despair. His breath is coming in heaving, ragged spurts, and the cold has not yet dissipated. His roving eyes land upon Crowley, and with a sob, he clamps his hands over his mouth.

“Aziraphale,” he repeats. His voice is as gentle as he can make it, unintentionally laced with concern.

“Crowley,” he gasps, “oh, God, for a second I thought—”

He reaches out. He has never been good at that, exactly, at reaching out. He has always been better at being the follower in the dance. His hands take Aziraphale’s in his own. He lets him do it, staring at him with wide, blue eyes. With a jolt, Crowley realizes that he is crying.

“The Holy Water,” he concedes, and he understands with a sudden and jarring clarity. “Crowley, I didn’t know why you needed it and I thought—” He doesn’t finish the sentence, instead leaving it hung there in the air. All of its nasty implications are not lost on Crowley, who is quickly realizing that he has been being remarkably stupid.

“You thought I needed it for myself,” he says. He has been so _selfish._

Aziraphale nods jerkily. His hands are shaking ever so slightly.

Crowley does not know how to say what it is he needs to say. It has always been Aziraphale who has been skilled with words, with propping them up against one another when they are urgently needed. He doesn’t know how to apologize for this, how to make amends. But he knows, somehow, what he must say here.

“My dear, my star in the sky, dearest mine. I will not leave you.” He hears the inquisitive intake of breath from Aziraphale, who recognizes the lines. He carries on. “I will forever be here, I promise you this, my Versailles, my cardinal bird, my willow tree.”

“I love you, too,” he whispers, and Crowley leans forwards and kisses him. He feels the firm press of Aziraphale’s lips against his own, knows that he is there. _Not wood or smoke_ , he thinks triumphantly. When he pulls away, the lost expression in his eyes has dimmed somewhat.

“I’m sorry,” he says, looking down at his hands within Crowley’s. “I’m sorry about this.”

“Don’t apologize. Not for this, not ever.”

There is a moment of silence that stretches on for an impossibly long infinity. Then: “Can I—have a hug?”

Crowley almost laughs. “You silly thing,” he says, drawing him into the safety of his arms. He releases his wings, wrapping them around the two of them like a shield, like a promise.

“Please don’t go,” Aziraphale says, so softly that it is almost nothing. He feels his breath, hot on his skin. He can feel the fragility in his words, uncertainty and fear and despair intermingling.

“I’m right here, angel,” he says. “And I won’t go.”

The angel does not answer, simply buries his face into the crook between Crowley’s neck and his shoulder. They are mirror images, he thinks. They are two trains running parallel to each other, waving into the other’s windows.

“I love you,” Crowley says. And whatever it means, he means it, from the very bottom of his demonic heart.

“I love you, too, my dear,” he says. The frigid cold has nearly entirely seeped away. “Tell me about something? Please.”

He understands this need for words to fill up the silence, the unbearable roaring rush of blood in your own head. He understands it all too well.

“Of course,” he says. He talks about all manner of things; a new restaurant he’d been thinking of going to, a funny spot of trouble he’d run into sometime in the seventeenth century, a book he’d seen that he thought maybe Azirpahale would like. He lets his words wash over him, lets them soothe his fears. It doesn’t matter what he’s saying, because what he means is still the same, a constant, consistent hum.

_I love you and I won’t leave. I’m right here, my love, my mourning dove._

Aziraphale understands. He is lulled back into sleep by his lover’s voice.

This time, he has no nightmares.

**Author's Note:**

> why am I literally only capable of writing angst, I swear I sat down to write something sweet and soft but it ran away from me yikes
> 
> edit: according to the comments, some people didn't know that the line Aziraphale and Crowley quote to each other was written by me, which is like. really sweet? you guys are awesome. 
> 
> leave a comment or a kudos if you're feeling so inclined! I read (and reread, multiple times) and cherish each and every single one :)


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